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Microsoft patent ruling rescues a flawed format - August 7, 2007

Alcatel-Lucent called a judge's decision to throw out the jury's $1.5 billion damage award against Microsoft in the MP3 lawsuit "shocking and disturbing" and vowed to appeal the ruling.

I don't know enough about patent law to evaluate how shocking the ruling was. But it certainly was unfortunate. Not because it benefits Microsoft but because it benefits MP3, at least for now.

The AlcaLu suit, alleging that Microsoft's Windows Media Player infringed a group of patents owned by Alcatel-Lucent covering MP3 technology, was one of several pending against consumer companies over MP3 technology.

In February, little-known MP3 Technologies of Marshall, Texas sued Apple, Samsung and Sandisk, charging that their portable MP3 players infringed one of its patents in the compression format.

For awhile, it was beginning to look as if MP3 might simply become too hot to handle for big consumer-goods companies. If Alcatel-Lucent were to prevail, everyone from Apple to RealNetworks to Sony could be in the line of fire over the same technology. If there's anything to the MP3 Technologies claim, anyone making an MP3 player is in trouble.

The litigation lead some to speculate that the ultimate winners in the legal brouhaha could be various open-source compression formats, or at least published standards such as AAC. Both options would offer superior sound quality over MP3, whose chief benefit at the time it became popular in dial-up days was its relatively small file size, not its audio fidelity.

As an audio format, MP3 frankly sucks. And with broadband penetration much higher today than when Napster first appeared, the compromises involved in MP3 really aren't necessary.

It's one technology that could stand being sued out of existence.

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